Clockwise Journey Around Iceland

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Gerard Yunker, "Landscape Study 8 Southeast Iceland - Hof," 2016

60" x 20"

Last year, Calgary photographer Gerard Yunker spent eight days in Iceland, moving clockwise around the island and taking multiple exposures of the same scene that he then combined into digital panoramas.

By maximizing each image’s resolution with his Hasselblad camera he was able to capture details beyond the reach of film. The photos show more than the eye can see – he later found birds and electrical poles, things he was unaware of as he was shooting.

“They’re fundamentally visual landscapes, but they are also physical, in terms of sensing rather than just seeing,” says Yunker, who has worked largely in commercial photography since graduating from the Alberta College of Art and Design in 1986.

“In this unknown environment, these frigid, metallic skies, that piercing light, the radically changing conditions and temperatures, I just surrendered to it; becoming part of it, standing inside of it, seeing it change.”

The works become almost abstract, strange, yet familiar, variations of cloud, rock and ice. Yunker selected 10 images from the thousands he shot during some 100 hours in the field for his show at Calgary’s Paul Kuhn Gallery, on view from Feb. 4 to Feb. 25. The show’s title is Réttsælis, an Icelandic word meaning clockwise.

– Portia Priegert